Efficient control of parking in high traffic areas can present significant challenges, particularly regarding parking rates. High parking rates can result in declining visits from patrons and lead to a decrease in revenue for local businesses. A conventional parking facility may offer a pre-determined pricing scheme, including a static “early-bird” price, a static daytime price, and a static evening price. However, this simplistic model often fails to achieve a responsive supply-demand pricing scheme that more accurately reflects the moment-to-moment market value of a parking place, fails to maximize profit for the parking facility, and/or fails to actively respond to demand and to attract customers.
Conventional parking facilities also fail to attract customers by failing to communicate prices in a manner that takes advantage of modern vehicle capabilities. For example, customers in fully and partially autonomous vehicles are becoming more prevalent and may be attracted to facilities that take advantage of their vehicles' capabilities. Such vehicles may be equipped to communicate with third party systems, such as other vehicles or a parking facility, and may be capable of wirelessly receiving pricing and parking information and even autonomously parking in a parking space. Yet, conventional parking facilities do not exploit these trends in any significant way that impacts the customer experience of the facility.